Chistmas In Manhattan Collection. Alison Roberts
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realised soon after that that the connection was still there. The way he’d looked at her that day at the park—as if he really wanted to hear her story.
As if he really cared.
Oh, and that kiss. In that wreck of a kitchen still redolent with the smells of grilled cheese and freshly baked cookies. Even now, Grace could remember the fear that had stepped in when he’d been about to touch her breast. As though the lumpy scars beneath her clothing had suddenly been flashing like neon signs.
Crumpling the empty polystyrene cup, she dropped it into the bin beside the cooler, catching her bottom lip between her teeth as if she wanted to hide a smile.
They hadn’t mattered last night, those scars. She’d barely been aware of them herself...
She was back in the department now and she could see a new patient being wheeled into Resus.
So many patients came and went from that intensive diagnostic and treatment area but some were so much more memorable than others.
Like the first patient she had ever dealt with here. That badly injured cyclist who’d been a casualty of the power cut when the traffic lights had gone out. And the frozen baby that she and Charles had miraculously brought back to life. Yep... Grace would never forget that one.
That time with just the two of them when it had seemed as if time had been somehow rewound and that there was nothing standing between herself and Charles. No social differences that had put them on separate planets all those years ago. No past history of partners who had been loved and lost. No barriers apart from the defensive walls they had both constructed and maybe that had been the moment when Grace had believed there might be a way through those barriers.
She’d been right. And Helena had been right in noticing that there was something different about her today.
The only thing that could have made her even happier would be to feel the vibration against her waistband that would advertise an incoming text message.
But it didn’t happen. Case after case took her attention during the next few hours. An asthmatic child who had forgotten his inhaler in the excitement of heading to watch the parade and suffered an attack that meant an urgent trip to the nearest ER. A man who’d had his foot stepped on by a horse. A woman who’d been caught up in the crowd when the first pains of her miscarriage had struck.
Case after case and the time flew by and Grace focused on each and every case as if it was the only thing that mattered. To stop herself checking her phone? It was well past lunchtime when she finally took a break in a deserted staffroom and sat down with a cup of coffee and could no longer ignore the weight and shape of her phone. No way to avoid glancing at it. At a blank screen that had no new messages or missed calls flagged.
Anxiety crept in as she stared at that blank screen. Was Charles sick or injured or had something happened to one of the twins? She could forgive this silence if that was the case but it would have to be something major like that because to treat her like this again when he knew how it would make her feel was...well, it was unforgiveable. All he’d had to do was send a simple message. A stupid smiley face would have been enough. Surely he would understand that every minute of continuing silence would feel like hours? That hours would actually start to feel like days?
But if something major like that had happened, she would have heard about it. Like she’d heard about Miranda being caught up in that tunnel collapse. A thread of anger took over from anxiety. How could she have allowed herself to get into a position where everything she had worked so hard for was under threat? She had come to New York to start a new life. To move on from so much loss. The loss of her marriage. The loss of the family she’d dreamed of having. The loss of feeling desirable, even.
Charles had given her a glimpse of a future that could have filled all those empty places in her soul.
This silence felt like a warning shot that it was no more than an illusion.
That the extraordinary happiness she had brought to work with her was no more than a puff of breath on an icy morning. The kind she had been making as she’d walked to Manhattan Mercy this morning in a haze of happiness after last night.
Last night?
It was beginning to feel like a lifetime ago. A lifetime in which this scenario had already played out to a miserable ending.
Anxiety and anger both gave way to doubt.
Had she really thought that history couldn’t repeat itself? This was certainly beginning to feel like a re-run.
Maybe it had only been in her imagination that her scars didn’t matter.
Maybe having a woman in his bed had opened old wounds for Charles and he was realising how much he missed Nina and that no one could ever take her place.
Maybe it had been too much, too soon and everything had been ruined.
For a moment, Grace considered sending another message. Just something casual, like asking whether they’d been to the parade this morning or saying that she hoped they were all having a good day.
But this new doubt was strong enough to make her hesitate and, in that moment of hesitation, she knew she couldn’t do it.
Her confidence was starting to ebb away just as quickly as that happiness.
ANOTHER HOUR WENT past and then another...and still nothing.
Nothing...
No call. No text. No serendipitous meeting as their paths crossed in the ER, which was such a normal thing to happen that its absence was starting to feel deliberate.
Grace knew Charles had finally come to work this afternoon because the door to his office was open and she’d seen his leather laptop bag on his desk when she’d gone past a while back. She’d heard someone say he was in a meeting, which wasn’t unusual for the chief of emergency services, but surely there weren’t administrative issues that would take hours and hours to discuss? Maybe it hadn’t actually been that long but it was certainly beginning to feel like it.
She thought she saw him heading for the unit desk when she slipped through a curtain, intending to chase up the first test results on one of her patients.
Her heart skipped a beat and started racing.
She’d know, wouldn’t she? In that first instant of eye contact, she’d know exactly what was going on. She’d know whether it had been a huge mistake to get this close to Charles Davenport again. To be so completely in love and have so many shiny hopes for a new future that were floating around her like fragile, newly blown bubbles.
She’d know whether she was going to find herself right back at Square One in rebuilding her life.
Almost in the same instant, however, and even though she couldn’t see his face properly, she knew it wasn’t Charles, it was his twin, Elijah. And she knew this because the air she was sucking into her lungs felt completely normal. There was none of that indefinable extra energy that permeated the atmosphere when she was in the same space as Charles. The energy that made those bubbles shine with iridescent colours and change their shape as if they were dancing in response to the sizzle of hope.
‘Dr Forbes?’
The tone in her migraine patient’s voice made her swing back, letting the curtain fall into place behind her.
‘I’m going to be sick...’
Grace grabbed a vomit container but she was too late. A nurse responded swiftly to her call for assistance and her gaze was sympathetic.
‘I’ll clean up in here,’ she said. ‘You’d better go and find some clean scrubs.’ Pulling on gloves, she added a murmur that their patient couldn’t overhear. ‘It’s been one of those days, hasn’t it?’
Helena